


paper stars

by nanami



Category: THE iDOLM@STER
Genre: Gen, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12225027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanami/pseuds/nanami
Summary: You aren’t special,a voice inside of her echoes.Anyone can make people smile.—There are less girls every class, and when they leave, their stars fall out of the sky.





	paper stars

**Author's Note:**

> hi. i love shimamura uzuki

The sun is clouded over the day Uzuki answers the flyer.

She had been thinking about it for a while, the page tattered and creased from being folded in her school bag and flattened back out with shaking fingers. _346 Idol Training Course_ , it said in gold-flaked print, the strokes of every character curling slightly where they end, fit for royalty. _Sing and dance onstage._

She thinks, briefly, of the idols she saw on stage all those months ago. Sparkling like true princesses, singing with such energy and passion that the entire crowd followed along and waved their penlights with them. They must cast a magic spell, she thinks, to smile so brightly and make others smile in turn.

It’s not until the very last day of the training course’s recruitment that she goes to the training building across the street from the production company. The building is old, the stairs creaking as she climbs them one-by-one. When she reaches the room the flyer indicated, on the top floor of the building, her hands are shaking. With a tentative knock on the door, she swallows and wills her legs to stop trembling.

A young woman opens the door, holding a clipboard, black hair tied tightly in a ponytail that hangs over her shoulder. Her face is pinched and almost a bit scary. When the lady says, “Here for the training course?”, Uzuki almost shrinks back in place.

But she can’t do that anymore. That was the _old_ Uzuki. The new Uzuki looks her in the eye and says, “Yes! My name is Uzuki Shimamura, and I’ll do my best!”

 

* * *

 

There are a few girls in her training group, but not as many as she expected. At least fifteen, but no more than twenty. They mostly keep to themselves, and Uzuki hasn’t had enough confidence to ask their names. They don’t talk to her much, either, and while it’s lonely, she doesn’t want to bother them.

After all, they’re all so pretty. The other girls are slender, tall and beautiful; she’s Uzuki, just Uzuki, with two left feet and no sense of rhythm. When the other girls dance, they move perfectly in unison like they’ve been practicing their whole life, but when she dances, she trips over herself, lost and off-beat.

Whenever she falls, she laughs, trying to hide her embarrassment with a smile. They glance over at her briefly, but it’s not long until they help her back to her feet. She feels ashamed, almost, that she brought their practice to a grinding halt. She draws her hands into the sleeves of her training jersey and looks to the ground, the laminated floor reflecting her embarrassed smile back at her.

 

* * *

 

A few days after their first practice, their trainer passes out little yellow stars cut from construction paper. “You’ll write a wish down on this,” she says, voice a little warmer than Uzuki remembers. “Where you want to go with your training, and what you want to do. We’ll come back to them and see how you’re progressing on your goal at the end of the course.”

Uzuki takes one and looks at the star, puzzled. It’s not very big—just about the size of her palm—so how long can their wishes really be? She has a lot that she wants to write down, but…

The girl next to her—Akemi, she reminds herself; she’s started to learn some of their names from their conversations—caps the marker and passes it to her with a smile. It feels heavy in her hand, and suddenly it feels too permanent to write anything down. What if she doesn’t make her wish in time, and the star just mocks her?

On the other side of her, the next girl in the makeshift line they’ve created clears her throat, telling her to hurry up. Panicking, Uzuki scribbles down the first thing she can think of on her star.

_I want to make people smile._

A few seconds later, their trainer calls for them to pass their stars back to her. “I’ll put them on the wall,” she tells them, inclining her head to an empty bulletin board near the training room’s door. “Remind yourself to never lose sight of your goal.”

 

* * *

 

Uzuki pauses at the board with their paper stars every time she leaves their practice room. Hers is off to the side, her handwriting large and messy. The other girls’ wrote theirs in perfect, practiced script. _I want to become a world-famous dancer,_ one says. The next one reads, _I want to sing at Tokyo Dome._

_I want to perform with an orchestra._

_I want to win the IA._

_I want to be a top idol._

Uzuki takes another look at her star and frowns. It sounds childish now. Her goal is too simple, something anyone could achieve. But only a few idols will can be a top idol; only a few will sing at Tokyo Dome. Can she really call her goal a dream like they can?

She bites her lip and turns away from the bulletin board. Maybe she can come up with a better goal later, something more flashy. Something more like everyone else’s.

 

* * *

 

The next time she goes to practice, a star is missing from the board.

The other girls don’t seem to notice. She wonders if she’s the only one who’s studied the bulletin board, if she’s the only one who’s compared goals. From the way the others are chatting amongst themselves about what happened at school or the books they’ve read recently, Uzuki thinks she might be.

Ten minutes later, their trainer walks into the practice room with her clipboard under her arms and claps her hands. “Okay, everyone, line up for stretches.”

Uzuki whirls her head around, counting all of the girls that have arrived. Something’s wrong; someone’s missing. “Um, I don’t think everyone’s here yet,” she quivers. “Should we wait?”

The trainer blinks, glancing down at her clipboard. “No, everyone’s here. Eriko’s left our class. She said she was too busy.” It sounds almost like she doesn’t believe it. “It happens. We’ll just keep going.”

Uzuki frowns at that. _It happens_ , said the trainer, like she’s used to it. She wonders if the others have thought about leaving.

When they start practice, Uzuki finds herself at the end of the line, and realizes that Eriko always danced next to her, and that more than a few times, she tripped over Eriko’s foot, sending them both tumbling to the ground.

Was it her fault?

 

* * *

 

There are less girls every class, and when they leave, their stars fall out of the figurative sky. Some take their stars with them, she’s told, but others throw them in the recycling bin near the exit. When Uzuki walks over to throw an empty bottle of water in the bin, it buries the star of the girl who wanted to be a top idol.

 

* * *

 

When their classroom’s crowd thins and there’s only a few girls left, Uzuki gets to know them pretty well. Akemi is still there—she’s spent most of the break times with Uzuki—but as their numbers dwindle it’s hard not to feel lonely, the walls of the practice room closing in and suffocating them.

“Uzuki-chan,” Akemi says quietly one day, holding Uzuki’s leg in place as she stretches forward, “have you ever wanted to quit this class?”

“What?” Uzuki says, looking up—and then yelps as a twinge hits her muscle and her knee cramps. After a few seconds of wincing (sometimes, she’s learned, you have to push through the pain), she looks at Akemi, hoping to find a smirk or a carefree smile there. Instead, Akemi is frowning and staring at the ground. Uzuki swallows back a lump in her throat. “W-Well, I really want to make my wish come true someday! So, um, I’m doing my best here, and I don’t want to quit.”

Akemi nods silently, and then smiles. “Yeah, you’re right. We have to. Trainer said that practice gets harder when you’re a real idol, but we’ll both make it through. I’m sure you can make your goal.”

Uzuki forces the corners of her mouth up, hoping that it looks at least somewhat like a smile. Since she wrote it, she’s had thoughts every day— _who would wish for something simple like that?_ , her mind would tell her as she laid awake in bed, shrinking back into her pajamas and hugging a pillow. _Anyone can make people smile._

 _You aren’t special_ , a voice inside of her echoes as she glances at Akemi’s eyes, bright and cheerful and humming a tune as she holds Uzuki’s leg down again. _Anyone can make people smile._

 

* * *

 

Akemi texted her to say that she wouldn’t be at class today, and when Uzuki gets to their practice room, the lights are off.

It’s cloudy out, the sun obscured, and it makes the far wall, window from floor to ceiling, cast a dreary glow in the room. Uzuki clutches at the strap to her school bag and tightens her hands around it, a tether to her happiness.

By the time she’s changed into her training jersey, the trainer has arrived, but no one else has. “I’ll help you stretch, Shimamura,” she sighs, face pinched. “If no one else is coming, we can start right away.”

“Um, yes!” Uzuki stutters, holding her hands close to her chest. “Thank you very much!”

It’s a more difficult session than usual—with a recent idol song playing on the trainer’s boombox as she claps her hands to the beat, making Uzuki sweat as she dances like on the edge of a knife, feet aching and sore.

When her trainer finally calls for a break, Uzuki rubs her face with a towel and grabs her water bottle. Her bag is over by the bulletin board, sparse and lonely without the nebula of stars that once dotted it. She stares at it for a brief moment, until she walks back over to the other side of the room, as far away as she can be.

The board is too sad to look at, now, full of broken dreams and shattered hopes.

The rest of the room is just as gloomy, but looking out at the city is good enough to pass the time, so Uzuki sits by the window instead of at the center of the room, where others once chatted. She pulls her legs up to her chest and cranes her head to look outside; across the street is the castle that calls for her, _364 Production_ displayed proudly on the front. It looks almost like a school building, but more regal and fancy. She supposes that’s fitting for where Cinderellas gather, the belles of the ball that she sees dancing gracefully in her dreams like they’ve never touched the ground.

Uzuki isn’t like that, yet. She falls too much during practice, and even her trainer sighs whenever she trips and a bruise starts to bloom in red hues on her knees. Uzuki laughs and helps herself to her feet, hoping that her trainer’s grimace will fade.

The bruises never do.

 

* * *

 

Akemi isn’t at practice again.

Maybe she’s late, Uzuki thinks to herself, alone in the practice room. She watches the clock’s hands tick and fill her ears like a drumbeat, waiting for Akemi to show up.

 

* * *

 

There’s only one star left on the bulletin board.

 

* * *

 

Uzuki tears her star down. It’s a stupid wish anyway, she thinks. If she’s the only one at practice, she doesn’t have to display it. If her trainer notices, she doesn’t seem to bring it up.

She folds it up and stuffs it into a hidden compartment in her bag, zipping it up and out of sight. When she holds her bag and walks to school, it presses against her side like a knife, reminding her of all those weeks ago.

It makes her chest burn, a promise she made to herself but could never keep.

She puts it on her desk at home instead, tucked into a corner and under her schoolbooks, away from her heart.

 

* * *

 

The business card she was handed earlier that day—he said he was a producer, but he has a scary face and a terrifying aura; nevertheless, Uzuki can’t bring herself to throw it away—weighs heavy in her pocket, searing a hole through it until she takes it out at home and runs her fingers over the bezeled print, ink strong and confident. The logo at the top of the card says _346 Productions_ on it.

It feels like a dream, and she stares at it, daydreaming, picturing herself on stage. In the mirror she can see herself wearing a gown—an idol outfit? No, a princess dress, studded with jewels and flowing on the floor like running water. She twirls in place and the gown follows her movements.

The reverie shatters when she looks at her face, at the smile plastered there, crooked and unnatural and wrong. The producer said she had a nice smile, but all she can find is fault.

Can’t everyone smile? Aren’t they prettier smiles than hers?

 

* * *

 

She stops smiling.

 

* * *

 

She sifts through her schoolbooks, throwing them this way and that, until she finds her treasure and unfolds it, blinking back tears at the faintly scratched marker lines, and pulls it into her chest and hugs it like a promise she never wants to break.

_I want to make people smile._


End file.
